Baby’s First Tournament Report - Lobstercon 2025

I’ve never felt compelled to write a tournament report before, so please bear with me. I wasn’t really planning on it so don’t have super detailed notes on each match, but hopefully I can paint a picture of the general vibes and experiences of the weekend. No intentional snubs (except for Levi). 

(edit: I’m apparently pretty long-winded anyway, so this is probably for the best.)

Last week was the American OS Superbowl - where hundreds of middle-aged nerds descend upon Boston from across the globe, confusing Uber drivers and Bonchon employees for a long weekend. The Philly Dillboys™ grabbed a house as our hub, and Nate and I sat next to each other on the plane like the cute couple that we are. He saw I was watching The League on my iPad, so I threw on closed captions and tilted my screen like the bro I am. If you haven’t watched it in a decade like me, I highly recommend a rewatch. Got to the house, ran out for some supplies, and straight into MTG.

Thursday night was a smaller group for Ante40k hangs - I really just wanted to touch on this to share how my weekend started. Nick (Eureka Shivan, king of OS swag) and I head to [redacted] to get our fix. My first match of the weekend was against the always pleasant and fun Jason Schwartz (not sarcasm, to be clear - Jason rules), and my opener was 5 lands, a Contract, and some other irrelevant card. I keep on the draw with the plan to Contract my way into something playable rather than going down to 6. Jason goes turn 1 Ritual into Underworld Dreams. Cool, guess I’ll go fuck myself. Turn 2 he plays an Ankh, and turn 3 he plays a Black Vise. I somehow came back to take this game…

Just kidding, I completely got my shit pushed in and had to Contract to try and hit a Bird since I was at 0% to win that game. Luckily I hit the Bird, so in all, the Dreams hit me for 9 in one turn. Off to a great start! Rest of the evening was fun but uneventful, and we headed back to DillboyHQ™ for some Bonchon, additional hangs, and chatting about how we were feeling about the main event.

I have extremely poor MTG habits when it comes to actually preparing for events. I’ll generally build something, play it for an event or two, then hang it up for awhile and switch to something new.  There are only so many hours we have to play MTG at our advanced age, so I just kind of want to do it all. I have been playing and iterating on a version of Arabian Aggro all year, tweaking the sideboard, and actually having a mental gameplan for the day. Who’dathunk coming prepared is actually a good idea?

The Deck

Here is the 75 I landed on for the day:

• Creature Suite

  • I was originally on 4 Dibs, but they are a late game liability with so much burn flying around.

  • Since we are playing Swedish, it felt good going somewhat heavy on Ernies with so many Su-Chis in the field. The last iteration of the deck had a Girth Elemental as an additional dude with a big butt, but I opted to go a bit spicier (additional explanation to follow) and just try and close the game rather than get cute with Rock Daddy, who also dies to opposing BEBs.

  • I’m generally pretty low on Kird Ape, but it just fills the curve so well in this deck. He’s the Savannah Lion here - he dies to Factory blocks, but if he can get in for 2-4 damage he’s done his job. Justice for Harambe.

  • Pixies were the best creature in the deck, by a lot. Tons of games where opponents only had Su-Chi and Factories available to block, and if we can squeeze in for 2-4, that is usually enough. Also insane on defense as nobody wants to waste a Plow on this stupid card.

Not today, my sweet prince. 

• Burn package

  • The elephant in the room is the great Chain Lightning debate. The card blows ass. So let it be written.

  • In all seriousness, my gut was that playing at instant speed was going to be important - and it was. So I maxed out on Psi Blasts (Shatters 4-7 vs. Su-Chi)  and in Earth Elemental’s spot, put in…

  • Storm Seeker. The other elephant in the room, and countless people asking me how it felt in the deck. It let me down once in a tight match in the last round, but other than that it overperformed all weekend. It can’t be BEB’d or REB’d, which was its highest selling point for me, and I think my lowest Seeker of the tournament was for 4 damage. That was usually enough reach to inch over the finish line and felt like a real brewer’s advantage-style card that nobody saw coming. One felt like the right number for the main deck as once we have 4 mana, we usually want to be dropping Ernies.

• Artifact Blast

  • This card is such a banger that it gets its own section. It’s our answer to the question “but what about City in a Bottle?” Sure it’s a dead draw some portion of the time, but I got some nice unexpected blowouts throughout the weekend. Still not as satisfying as the one against Duncan last year where he had the game 1 City that he triumphantly slammed (seriously, that one felt like the Blast heard ‘round the world) but lots of hijinks was to be had anyway. Also, sorry Duncan, I will never stop telling that story.

  • The card is also a Su-Chi sniper so we can save our precious Psi Blasts to go face. Super common play throughout the event.

  • Artifact Blasting an opponent’s mana rocks, particularly Lotus, also was a relevant play all weekend. The tempo boost you get from denying your opponent’s big mana haymaker was frequently enough to buy enough time to push through lethal damage. This play was particularly potent against The Deck, where it always felt like that Lotus was going to lead into a fat Mind Twist (they always have it). If we’re going to get Twisted, we want them tapping that City of Brass to do it, and if you feel it coming, shooting off a flurry of burn that you have prepared in response.

  • Seriously, this card fucks. Play it.

• Artifacts

  • I opted against Su-Chi for this build as I have so few targets for Disenchant. Divine Offering is also a Terror + counter to a late-game Psi Blast, so the plan was to just make opposing Shatter effects as dead as possible.

• Mind Twist, Demonic Tutor, Balance?

  • One trap I frequently fall into is making my mana base significantly worse by splashing the broken restricted cards. It certainly would have been nice to have access to these cards in some games, but they’re far from free rolls in this deck. 

  • The card I missed the most was DT. We’re trying to drop our opponent to zero as quickly as possible, so my thought process was mana should be spent on advancing that plan rather than cheesing a win with a Mind Twist. Same with Balance. DT for the last points of burn or a Mana Drain would have been relevant some portion of the time, but I was happier with the mana consistency.

• Mana Base

  • I think the only interesting thing here was paring back on City of Brass, which was much easier to do given the above explanation of sticking to RUG. Getting Bottled as a Plague Wind is rough - I wanted to try and not make it a double Stone Rain as well.

  • 8 green duals felt fine to get the Apes swole enough to party. The general sentiment is this number is too low, but my guys were very rarely a 1/1. I do think this is the bare minimum amount of Forests to play to make the Apes a reliable threat.

• Sideboard

  • This is where things get interesting, and where preparation paid off. I knew there was going to be a lot of The Deck, Triple S, and some variations of Lion/Dib/Atog decks. Turns out I was right for a change, and think I played against one of these three decks every single match of the tournament (again, sorry if my recollection here is poor).

  • The Deck felt like one of the harder matchups as a dedicated creature deck. My sideboard was constructed to have a nice clean plan: take out all of our Arabian dudes. This meant -10 creatures and +10 sideboard cards for the control matchup. We bring in:

    • 2 Sylvan Library

    • 2 Artifact Blast

    • 4 Black Vise

    • 1 Storm Seeker

    • 1 Earthquake (this one is the least important but acted as an additional Fireball in the matchup).

  • This plan just fired on all cylinders for this tournament. The only creatures left were Pixies and Factories, which were able to deal just enough damage to allow us to close with burn. The “I don’t want to Plow this stupid Pixie” methodology let me crack in until the trigger finally had to be pulled, and by then it was usually too late.

  • Black Vise as the turn 1 play, especially if I lost game 1, was potent as my hope was more creature removal came in and Disenchant effects came out. I can’t say for certain this is how all of my opponents sideboarded, but that’s what I would have done.

  • I added a second Sylvan Library as one of the last changes to the deck, and it paid off big time. We’re trying to settle in to more of a control/tempo game by taking all of the overstatted Arabian fellas out, and The Deck can rarely (though not never) present a quick kill. I felt like every time I cast it in these matchups I paid somewhere between 12 and 16 life to keep the momentum going of churning through the deck.

  • I also had a great plan against Blood Moon - try and dodge that fucking card all day. This plan worked well, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. You can’t beat everything, and my sideboard concession was a bad plan against Blood Moon in favor of more cards that were good in the control matchup. I did have the two BEBs and a sweet MG-altered Shivan Dragon that I desperately wanted to cast, but the opportunity didn’t present itself.

  • A few months back I did have a bit of an unlock conversation with my buddy Will Parshall, talking about Blood Moon prep. The thesis is that Blood Moon-centric decks are usually going to go about .500 on any given day, and I was in it to win it. I’m sorry Tim Moran, but it’s true.

  • The other matchup sideboarding was much less exciting, generally trying to just add a few percentage points but keeping the main plan the same. I do think that perhaps one of the Artifact Blasts should have been the 4th Shatter, as much as it pains me to say.

  • Where are the REBs?

    • Having a REB/BEB plan seems to be the standard, but I asked myself: “Hey handsome. What are we trying to REB that the deck can’t handle?” And I couldn’t really come up with anything. The card is generically good, but there isn’t a back-breaking Blood Moon style card in blue I was too concerned with. We want more of an aggressive plan, so I tried leaning into that by getting a bit more creative. It’s a great card and can hit the fat Braingeyser or an Ancestral, but that wasn’t the axis I was trying to play on.

    • For those that watched my Top 4 match against Pez, the REBs would have been nice as I don’t have a ton of game against opposing Dibs outside of Psi Blast, which ideally go face in Dib mirrors when possible. Sometimes your opponent just has you fair and square, and I was so far behind that a few REBs wouldn’t have saved me anyway.

• Deck Insights

  • I’m a believer that in OS, a deck should have 0 creatures or 15+. We need to either go wide enough to get through Abyss and its equivalents or let creature removal completely rot in hand. Going into Protect the Queen mode in a deck with one Mana Drain as the only protection is a losing proposition.

  • I was a bit surprised at how grindy my matches were. I frequently lost game 1 but was able to recover to pick up the last 2 to take the match. I think one aspect of OS (and MTG in general) is not properly sideboarding dependent upon if you’re on the play or draw. The most prevalent sample case I can provide is dumping your draw 7s in burn mirrors when you’re on the draw so you’re not letting your opponent untap and kill you on the spot. If we’re on the play in game 3, we bring at least one of them back in most of the time. Artifact Blast is also a million times better on the play and was cut when appropriate.

  • Don’t be afraid to throw your creatures off the cliff. This really was a deck of attrition, and we need to get in the chip damage where we can and rely on the deck to deliver the burn to close it out. There are also a lot of mind games here as attacking your 2 Pixies into a Serra can frequently result in 4 damage getting through as opponents don’t want their Angel getting bolted. There is a lot of math that needs to be done to figure out exactly when we should be chipping in and how much burn we have access to so we can close. Chances are good I would just be getting in for 2, losing a Pixie, and saving my Bolt to go to the dome. But sweet, innocent Serra Angel doesn’t always know that.

  • Be careful about your Storm Seeker timing. The “optimal” play is often to cast it in your opponent’s draw step, but be aware of what their outs are, what resources you have at your disposal, and fire it off when the chances are lower there is meaningful interaction. I had one game with my opponent at 4 with 4 cards in hand and it was tempting to get them to draw that extra card in the event they had an instant to avoid lethal. They had a Serra in play and their out (other than a Counterspell) was to plow their own creature and live. The Seeker™ sought exactly 4 and Plow was on top of my opponent’s deck. A narrow use case, I acknowledge, but it is relevant and does come up.

  • The most challenging part of playing this deck is understanding your role at any given moment. Figuring out when your Bolts are board control vs. facefucking your opponent is not easy and can be unintuitive. Determine what the line is that can net you the most damage, Bolt a dude when necessary to get in, and hope for the best.

  • Get comfortable using every part of the buffalo. This deck is based on incremental advantage, and if/when you win, it will often be at 5 life or less. Learn to live on the edge, baby.

The Tournament

I was able to go 7-2 on day 1, which put me in 9th place going into day 2 for Top 16. I dropped my first match in round 6 and the second in round 9. Levi and Mano both kindly came over to tell me they hope I lose in the last round, which is always helpful and encouraging. I aim to please, so threw the match on purpose. Or at least that’s what I’ll tell myself - I’m so generous that I work to help my friends’ breakers. Fuck you Levi. 

I did land a feature match a few times on day 1, which adds a layer of stress to the situation. Losing a match from a missed Orb flip and being ridiculed for the rest of my life was at the front of mind the whole time, so my inner monologue of “don’t punt, you beautiful, beautiful idiot” was my credo. I think I played pretty tight, as did all of my opponents on camera. Notably, I was able to take a match against reigning champion Rich Shay on camera, which was definitely a bucket list item for me. The dude is a monster player and our match was an ass-clencher, but the Sylvans did a lot of heavy lifting. 

Hearing DFB announce Top 16 was absolutely surreal. I put in the work, played well, got lucky (as is required in such a high variance format), and got to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Dave also made the decision to have Top 16 be open decklists in the interest of fairness since some of us had streamed matches on day 1. This was a great call and we all had an even playing field going into day 2. 

For Top 16, my first opponent was Jason Smart, who I lost to on day 1. Our day 1 match was weird with two complete non-games, and I mis-sideboarded. Our game 3 during the Swiss had him deal something like 12 damage with a single Savannah Lion as I was completely caught off guard and unprepared to deal with it. I was able to focus in for our Top 16 match, had some good draws, and took it in 2. Jason was gracious and a sweet dude, and we discussed that it was odd that the only OS club to have long sleeve shirts was the one from Texas. He vowed to have Simon take some time to self-reflect and order more appropriate swag. Perhaps booty shorts?

Just two studs sensing blood in the water. 

After hitting top 8, I started getting messages on Discord from some friends who weren’t able to make the event and it was starting to set in that I had a real chance at taking that beautiful Shark home to PA. Much of the sentiment was that I was “the good guy” in these matches as I think I was the only one in the entire day 2 population that wasn’t running Mind Twist and company. 

Onto my Top 8 match, where I had another bucket list item checked off. My match was against none other than dual-Shark holder and World Champion Olle Rade, who I had never had the privilege of meeting before. I see why people like him so much. He’s just so fucking good at this game, but kept it fun and light as I sat there shitting my pants under the bright lights. Our match was incredibly tight, but I was able to squeak it out in 3 games. Completely surreal and Olle, like all of my opponents, was incredibly gracious as we debriefed after the match.

And this is where the wheels come off.

Top 4 was against a friend, Pez, who is also an absolute beast of a player. He happens to be one of the most genuine dudes in the scene, as he was sincerely happy for how far I made it in the tournament and was rooting for me on day 1. But homeboy was out for blood on day 2. We went to 3 games and the first 2 were tight; the third one was an absolute romp with me having to Regrowth a BEB to not be dead to a Bolt off the top of his deck. I was playing from behind the entire game, and Pez mercifully closed it out quickly.

Pez’s happy face .

As everyone I’m sure is aware, Pez went on to win the entire event with Lion/Dib/Bolt. We joked that he did it for the USA as his opponent was Brother Jonas from the UK. I’ve only had one experience with Brother Jonas (when he crushed me last year in the final round), but I was happy to see two great dudes battle it out in the finals. Well done gentlemen, and congrats to Pez on his well-earned victory. After all was said and done, I landed in 3rd place overall, which is absolutely insane to think about for a tournament of this size and player caliber.

There’s a certain liberation when you lose late in a tournament. Like I finally took the huge dump that was rumbling all day and could now finally play some low pressure games. Nick, Nate and I were signed up for the trios event, and I played in the 7-point seat. We registered our name as Dillboys™, and the other team in the house took exception and changed their name to something else Dillboy™ related. After this internal bickering, we played a match at home to close out the weekend to determine Dillboy Supremacy™ and we came out on top. Suck it, Lesser Dillboys™.

I was on a mono blue/artifact deck that was super fun to pilot. Our first round was against some Sisters of the Flame, a club close with Philly OS. I was glad to see some friendly faces on the other side of the table. I won’t give the play-by-play of this event as we dropped after round 3 to go get dinner, but I did get to do “the thing” once with my deck and hit my opponent with the Power Monolith combo. I had no wincon ready at that point, but with infinite mana, was able to get away with some hijinks. I dumped my hand, which included a Tawnos’ Coffin to take out my opponent’s Scavenger Folk. I also had a Book and Copy Artifact in hand, so was able to Ancestral myself for free every turn until I finally found my closer. In this case, the Rocket Launcher was pretty close to the top so it wasn’t too painful to play through. Thanks, Abe, for being such a good sport and enjoying watching “the thing” happen.

I’m glad we all enjoyed this. Especially Vince. 

DFB found me outside, gave me a big dude hug, and handed me my loot for making Top 4. If there’s ever a prize draft after an event, I try and grab something that was in my deck that day as a nice memory. Just in line with the rest of the weekend, the prize was absolutely perfect as I owed a bunch of match wins to Black Vise. 

Also, let’s talk more about Artifact Blast. Since I had the best MTG weekend of my life, I decided to treat myself to an alter by Bryon Wackwitz. I’m AMPED at how this bad boy turned out. 

So anyway, he just started blasting. 

I have decided to dedicate my life to spreading The Good Word™ about our lord and savior, Artifact Blast. I commissioned these patches as something of a community bounty for sweet Blast plays. If you want a patch, please share your Blast story in one of the main Discords for us all to enjoy and I’ll be happy to get one of these bad boys in your hot little hands. 

You, too, can start blasting. 

All good things must come to an end, and Lobstercon is no exception. We grabbed an early flight home on Sunday morning and headed back to the real world. I’ve been home for a week and still flying high on the vibes, Bonchon, and above all, community support. I’ve never had so many fist bumps, bro hugs, and words of encouragement and it’s kind of an indescribable feeling. 

Thanks for a killer event as always, DFB and company. I feel comfortable speaking for the community here and saying that we all look forward to this event every year and this was the best Lobstercon yet. The dedication to the OS community, and even more importantly, your own community, is an admirable quality we all strive for. We need more of you guys out in the world.

Every event like this further reaffirms that I’ve found my tribe. Except Levi. Fuck Levi.

Love to all,

Farb

PS - Colby, I haven’t forgotten you, king. Nice meeting you, and go to hell.